I always enjoy reading my beloved professor’s (Diomidis Spinellis) thoughs from time to time and every time I find something interesting especially in this bad titled long-read which reminds me of the human limits of technocrats and of the always emering digital revolution.

What strikes me this time though, in my 33 years of wisdom (yeah whatevah..), is what if the human aspect is too vague and wide for an IT system to captivate.

For whatever reason I also didn’t like the stressed mentions of the after hours 11 pm and midnight. Living for the past few years in the countryside I come to value outside of office human activities, friends and family time more than office work itself.

The part that made me smile was this one:

Unfortunately, the principles of agile software development are at odds with the way government IT projects are traditionally implemented in Greece. I presented the case for agility to the board of the Federation of Hellenic ICT Enterprises, but got a hostile reaction. We were thus saddled with inflexible practices and contracts for large IT systems like TAXIS, ELENXIS, and the MIS. For instance, for a (theoretically) simple change of the VAT rate a contractor asked to be paid for three effort months. We therefore tried to see how we could specify the use of agile development practices in new funded projects, and also how we could develop software with agile methods in-house by utilizing GSIS staff.